Shannon County History

It took nearly 60 years of waiting to read Charles
Wesley Allen's story. Time is up! The University of Nebraska Press recently
released (after a nudge from gg-grandson Craig Howe) Allen's memoirs with,
FROM FORT LARAMIE TO WOUNDED KNEE, In the West That Was. Senior Research
Anthropologist Richard E. Jensen of the Nebraska State Historical Society
who edited the manuscript writes in the introduction, "It is not known
when Allen began writing From Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee, but it was
probably in the early 1930s when he was over eighty years old." In 1938,
Allen turned to friend Addison E. Sheldon, superintendent of the Nebraska
State Historical Society for help in getting a publisher. Allen died on
November 16, 1942 at the Hot Springs State Soldier's Home without realizing
his goal. The original typed manuscript remains in the possession of the
Nebraska State Historical Society. The exciting Autobiography of Red Cloud,
War Leader of the Oglalas, another Allen manuscript (edited by Jensen's
colleague R. Eli Paul) was released earlier this year through the Montana
Historical Society Press.

The varied and colorful career of Charles Wesley
Allen (1851 - 1942) took him throughout the northern Plains during an exceptionally
turbulent era in its history. He was at the Red Cloud Agency when Red Cloud
attempted to prevent the raising of the American flag and the Lakota nearly
took over the agency. Allen also visited Deadwood at the height of the
Black Hills gold rush, helped build the first government agency on the
Pine Ridge Reservation, and reported on the Lakota Ghost Dance. Allen happened
to be walking through the Indian camp at Wounded Knee when shots rang out
on December 29, 1890, and his is arguably the best of all the eyewitness
accounts of that tragedy. This is Allen's previously unpublished vivid
account of the years he described as "the most exciting chapter of my life."
As much the chronicle of the passing of an era as a personal narrative,
in its simple, direct, and often moving prose it captures the injustices,
gritty details, and relentless energy of a period of dramatic change in
the West. (From Fort Laramie to Wounded Knee, University of Nebraska Press,
1997) The book contains a newly discovered photograph of Charles W. Allen
ca.1880s, courtesy of Kenneth & Evelyn Copeland of Mills, NE.

Mr. Allen married a Lakota woman, Emma Hawkins
(anglicized from Hockenstrasser), on August 23, 1873 near Fort Laramie,
Wyoming. Descendants of some of their twelve children still reside in the
Martin area where the couple were longtime residents. It is interesting
to note that Philip Allen recently opened Allen's Trading Post in Martin,
following in one of his great-grandfather's endeavors.

History buffs may find a donated copy of FROM
FORT LARAMIE TO WOUNDED KNEE, In the West That Was and Autobiography of
Red Cloud, War Leader of the Oglalas at the Bennett County Public Lib